Although organized labor has receded in most industries, unions have picked up momentum in healthcare, which some attribute to upheaval in healthcare markets because of cost containment and staff shortages.

With more than three decades of experience helping shape federal and state healthcare policy on some of the most critical issues, including Medicare reform and universal health coverage, Stuart Altman has earned guru status.

If there is an Ernest Amory Codman of the past 30 years, a likely candidate would be physician Donald Berwick. In fact, in 1999, Berwick was given the annual Codman Award by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations in recognition of his work in quality improvement, a field...

It's too early to tell whether the regime of physician informaticist David Brailer as the nation's first healthcare information technology czar will be viewed as a watershed or a blip in IT history. During his tenure as head of HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information...

When John Breaux retired from the Senate last year, the moderate Democrat from Louisiana had become well-known for his ability to negotiate across party lines. During Breaux's 32 years in Congress, which began when he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1972 at the age of 28, he was...

When President George W. Bush took the podium in January for his annual State of the Union speech, he waited a little over half an hour before he mentioned healthcare. But in stump speeches across the country before and after the address, the topic has come up more quickly and become a touchstone...

Bill Clinton campaigned heavily during the 1992 presidential election on healthcare reform that would provide all Americans with access to care. But his contributions to healthcare have not been limited to his failed reform plan of 1993 (See related item, p. 12).

Thomas Frist Sr. is best-known as a co-founder of the Hospital Corporation of America, but he preferred to be known as a physician. He tended to seven Tennessee governors in a practice spanning 50 years, and wrote to his grandchildren in 1997: "Be happy in your career. ... I loved being a doctor...

In a healthcare career that spanned nearly half a century, Sister Irene Kraus was known as a strong leader, both fiscally and spiritually. As founding president and chief executive officer of the Daughters of Charity National Health System, St. Louis—which became a national powerhouse upon...

During his 10-year tenure as head of Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest and arguably most successful not-for-profit health plans in the country, physician-executive David Lawrence, 65, led the system through rough waters and emerged with a model for integrated care some viewed as the only...

Teaching hospitals, particularly those in his home state of New York, had a trusted ally in the late Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served in the Senate from 1977 to 2001. He then spent the last two years of his life as a paid adviser and honorary board member with the Greater New...